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In spring, the photographs of Italy went around the world. They showed military trucks transporting corpses and delivered a clear message: the coronavirus can cause considerable suffering if left unchecked.
Now the number of cases in the Mediterranean country is on the rise again. On Thursday, authorities reported nearly 38,000 new infections in 24 hours. Previously, the country with its 60 million people had passed the one million mark for infections detected since the pandemic began.
The video of a man who was found dead in an emergency room bathroom at a clinic in Naples also caused considerable discomfort. It is not clear if the man has already been treated there or has been waiting for a test. The images also show a hallway filled with hospital beds. The video had spread quickly on social media.
People treated in parking lots
The managers of the affected hospital promised to investigate the circumstances of the death. The Italian Foreign Minister, Luigi Di Maio, sees in the “shocking video” further proof of how precarious the situation has become around the Italian port city.
“In Naples and in many parts of Campania the situation is out of control,” Luigi Di Maio wrote on Facebook on Wednesday evening. There are reports of people being served in the car in parking lots. Others would have to wait too long to be transported to the hospital.
Regional Minister Francesco Boccia called the video recordings embarrassing for all those responsible. At the same time, in a television interview on La7 station, he pointed out that too many people with mild corona symptoms come to the hospital instead of being cured at home.
Images from Naples show people waiting in long lines of cars in front of a hospital to be examined or treated. Some sick people still received oxygen or an infusion in their car, the Reuters news agency reports.
Calabria: 154 intensive care beds for the entire region
While the north of the country was mainly affected in the spring, Italy has seen a worrying increase in the number of cases in many more regions during the current wave. This also includes the poorest areas in the south of the country that have a poorer hospital system.
At the beginning of the year, there were 146 intensive care beds available throughout Calabria. Despite the threat of the coronavirus, their number rose to just 154 at the end of October. In Sicily, the mayor of Palermo warned on Monday in the context of rising infection rates of an “inevitable massacre.”
Due to regionally different risk, the Italian government recently divided the country into three risk zones. More than half of the 20 regions (comparable to our federal states) were designated as red or orange zones. In the red zones, including Lombardy and Piedmont in the north and Calabria in the south, partial closures with exit restrictions apply.
The city of Naples and the surrounding region of Campania, on the other hand, have so far only been rated by the government as a moderate risk zone (yellow) based on 21 indicators. Several politicians had strongly criticized this in recent days and warned of the collapse of hospitals. Doubts were raised about the credibility of the region’s figures. After the shocking video from Naples, there were signals from Rome to reexamine the situation.
